Look: except for a few months in high school, I have never worked for a stereotypical company where I would go into an office and do work with other people; I have always worked by myself or remote. I relish working alone and have never had an issue with it; I've even been quite fanatical about it, trying to make sure everyone knew how great this lifestyle was (one which I learned from my father, who worked for a company half a world away from him, from a home office where he was always accessible to his son: me).

But... the pandemic also broke me. Bad. I wasn't at all prepared for life trapped inside where my only interaction with human beings I knew was via video. There were like four months in early 2021 where I only had about four interactions with flesh and blood humans whose name I knew (like, not some entirely random person)... one of them was the guy who lived in a nearby park whom I normally avoid as it is so difficult to end conversations. I gained a ton of weight and at one point--end of 2020--I had given myself some kind of weird anemia (I think from lack of B12 in my stupid closed-in diet).

Like: I am someone for whom his entire life normalized remote work and who thrived in such an environment and yet the pandemic was so hard I still haven't really recovered... thinking about it makes me cry. (And like, yes: I could have better managed my lifestyle or better handled the loneliness. Whatever. That is also true for you, and I at least am not judging you for that.) It is one thing to not work in an office--you can work from anywhere! and there are a ton of people who you can get to spend time with--and it is entirely another thing to work explicitly from a small room in your home day in and day out for a year without human contact.

I thereby want to posit that maybe--just maybe--the issue isn't working remotely but being forced to stay at home and at times even fear going to the supermarket. There were periods during this thing when people were even afraid to meet up outside, and so human contact for white collar professionals outside of relationships was pretty much just verboten. The world was in a shitty place, and you shouldn't judge working remote based on the experiences you had during a pandemic without even trying to control for the existence of a pandemic as part of your analysis.

I vividly remember trying to meet up with the few people who stayed behind and didn’t move to their parent’s lake house during covid, one person in the group being concerned about even meeting up outside and everyone else not wanting them to be left behind, so we did virtual on zoom. Laughs and fun, then with a button press the screen flicks black and you’re alone again in your tiny apartment you signed when the plan was to spend almost no time there.

You’re right, I do still think there is value working in person, but remote work by itself isn’t what caused this, even if it’s still what happened.

Hindsight has made all this more clear, but imo loneliness is a silent killer around the world today, and covid threw jet fuel on the fire.

You need social in person interaction as a human being. Nobody is disputing that. Should you rely on your work to get that interaction and can you make the claim that it helps your work?

Considering that it delivers a feeling of productive communion, the camaraderie and esprit d'corps of solving problems together, and generally feeling useful, the answer might be yes. Especially if, as an adult, it's where you spend most of your waking hours.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not romanticising the marriage of one's social life to one's workplace, nor overlooking the ways this "we are more than a company, we're family" rhetoric benefits employers at the expense of their employees' outside lives and broader well-rounded and fulfilment. But I think asking people to separate them in an extreme way is just as untenable.

I had the same timeline as you, but it was fine for me. Granted, I've never known anyone anywhere I've lived and barely leave home anyway. :p I'm grateful I seem optimized for the fully atomized cyberpunk existence which may only become more intense and universal in the future.

When you’re alone, someone telling you it’s your own fault and just take responsibility for it can feel really dark

My apologies. I know the pandemic was particularly hard on young people. This is the problem with old, comfortable and scared people making all the decisions.